uncluttering one day and one thing at a time

How has your decluttering gone over the weekend?

I know that the saying is that you can't organise clutter, you can only get rid of it, but I've been doing a bit of column A, a bit of column B. Friday I went to IKEA, bought a medium-sized shelf (and boxes to fit) to go in the spare room. This morning the kids and I assembled it, and then I spent two hours sorting things to go on it and to be thrown out. I have emptied three wicker washing baskets (and a very large suitcase), which previously had to craft supplies in them, and stacked all that I'm keeping into two boxes! I've also rehung the curtains in that room, saving a bit more floor space. I have hopes that I will have that room under control when a friend comes to stay in about a week, so that I don't have to move everything currently in there somewhere else in the house. (the idea is that all the wicker baskets will be given to another friend for classroom storage, if I can bear to part with them).

This follows on from yesterday, when I had visitors, one of whom went away with some children's clothing and another two who left with books. Very briefly my outbox was nearly empty!

How is your uncluttering going at this, the mid-point of the week?

I lost the day to reconciling book reviews across three platforms, and cycling through open and closing All! The! Tabs!. I'm not finished, but at least I'm closer...

Sometimes, for me, uncluttering isn't so much about getting rid of things (although that can be a great side effect) but about dealing with something that annoys me. So, this morning, I've just spent a productive 5-10 minutes sorting through my scrap paper pile, and I feel so much more relaxed about it that I did.

As a household with three kids, one of whom is through high school, and the other two still in high school, we've generated a lot of 'unused' paper through the last decade -- mostly half used scrapbooks and note books. We have a shelf that this gets put on, and then any time anyone needs to make notes or doodles, they grab paper out of there. However, there are different 'grades' of such paper, depending on how easy it is to get more/the proportion of it in the stack. And every time I see one of the kids grab some of the coloured construction paper (which means I usually can't read the notes), the heavier card stock, the graph/manuscript/dotted thirds lines paper, I take a moment to go 'don't use that, use the real scrap paper'. And mostly they do, but sometimes they just grab what is on top. And when what is on top is what has just come out of someone's desk drawer, it could be anything.

The sorting was pretty simple. I took the top 15-20cm off the pile (of ~30cm), and then anything I didn't care about that was roughly A4 sized went straight back on. Coloured paper and construction card were put in one pile; all the other 'precious' paper types in another, and scrap that was smaller than A4 was either sorted into a notepad pile or binned. The 'precious' papers have been put at the other end of the shelf (vertically, between existing dividers), and the small note pads have been put on top, so that they can be used first. Random bits of card, covers off scrapbooks, pieces too small, all in the bin.

And now I have a neat and tidy shelf, and I know that if I grab the top piece of paper off the active pile, it will be something I can throw out after I've used it, because it really is scrap.

What did you find to declutter this weekend?

I spent most of the weekend out of the house, so all I've managed is to decrease the number of books I'm partway through reading, and the number of remnant balls of yarn lying around waiting to be knitted into current projects.

How has everyone's uncluttering been going this week?

As previously advertised, I took the box (and some other bits and pieces) out of the front hall, and donated it. Not quite as virtuous as I might have been, because I took it to the op-shop that has the really good second-hand book section (bigger than the whole area of some op-shops) and came home with 11 new books (at least two are ones I already have, which are for a friend who I know was looking for this hard-to-find, probably out of print author).

As to yesterday and today, I can't actually point at anything. I've been doing *something* because the house is much tidier than it was (oh, and I cleared some of the things out of the fridge), but nothing that feels like having picked things to rehome. I do keep looking at a shelf in the lounge, but there is too much on it that I'd have to find homes for at present. But, oh, it would be nice to have that bit of wall back.

How did everyone's weekend uncluttering go? I know I'm writing this a bit late (for me), but it is still Sunday for some of you, so I'm hoping that counts...

Saturday for me was a bit of a write off, with the first ballet class (for me) of term, and then going to an exhibition ice-hockey match in the evening, but I started a project that I'm hoping will lead to uncluttering the yarn stash -- I'm making multi coloured knit strips (30 stitches wide, 85cm long) which will be sewn together to make blankets to be donated to a local cat shelter. I'm very deliberately not thinking about colour order, or much in the way of yarn weight (I'm pretty sure most of it is 8ply, but at least one of them would have been 12 ply), and just grabbing everything out of the Basket Where Left Over Yarn Goes to Rot* that is a tiny ball of 'urgh, whatever will I do with that'. I've gone for the strips idea because the materials and tools for one strip will fit in a tiny carry bag (which I made from fabric I've been hoarding for years because I knew it was useful, but didn't have a specific task -- like soft tulle). Strip one is about 50cm, so I'm pretty happy with that!

And then I spent Sunday working on finishing existing craft projects, so that at least I can get those out of the work space, and know what is 'left overs'.

(Today, I'm going to take the big box of random Stuff from the front hall, and drop it in at an op-shop, on the way to do the school pickup. Not quite in the right direction, which is why I've managed to put so much Stuff in it).



* Sadly, not quite hyperbole -- one ball had weaknesses where it split about every 30cm, so in the end it was just pulled to pieces and shoved in the 'stuffing' jar.